View full sizeMichael Lloyd/The OregonianFrank Kidd leafs through a notebook filled with photographs of the collectible toys stolen from a home on Southeast Belmont Street. He runs Kidd’s Toy Museum in Southeast Portland and kept his overflow collection at his daughter’s house.Frank Kidd opened the 8-foot-tall garage doors to the Southeast Portland home and nearly fell over in disbelief.

The shelves and tubs where he had stored more than $350,000 worth of toys and memorabilia collected over four decades were emptied. Left behind were a mess of papers strewn on the floor and some empty cardboard boxes -- two with disturbing messages scrawled in red with a marker pen, "Hate Spread It" and "(Expletive) the Police."

"They stripped the house and storage shed, stole everything," Kidd said. "They would have had to have been in here for weeks."

For 45 years, the Portland native amassed more than 15,000 antique toys and historic childhood treasures. He started with one toy truck that he bought on his way home from an automotive swap meet in Reno. His collection grew as he and his wife, Joyce, traveled all over the country to antique sales and toy conventions.

At first, he displayed the toys on a few shelves in his family's auto parts shop at Southeast Grand Avenue and Main Street. But soon, his collection grew so large that he decided to remodel part of his shop and turn it into a toy museum.

Now retired, Kidd visits the museum daily, "rain or shine" as he puts it. It's housed in a nondescript building at 1301 S.E. Grand Ave. It has no windows, to allow for more shelving and display cases.

"Yeah, I'm a pack rat, you know... buy or die," Kidd said.

He's kept some of his collection at his home. But when his Milwaukie house was remodeled in 1982, Kidd moved hundreds of boxes of antique toys to the garage of his daughter's Belmont Street home. The house sat vacant the past year as his daughter moved elsewhere.

In late August, Kidd stopped by the home, and found that most of the collectibles he had stored there were stolen. He called police Aug. 31.

"There were hundreds and hundreds of empty boxes. This wasn't like a one-time deal," said Central Precinct Officer Jim McMurray. "These people had to come back several times, I guarantee it."

"They left me a little plastic railroad crossing," Kidd said, as he walked through the empty garage.

Kidd despaired of ever seeing his prized collection again, but just weeks later Mike Ralston, one of his friends and a fellow collector, spotted one of Kidd's stolen carousel horses in the Really Good Stuff secondhand shop on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.

View full sizeMichael Lloyd/The OregonianA friend of Frank Kidd’s spotted one of his stolen 7-foot-long carousel horses at the Really Good Stuff secondhand shop on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.That helped police identify two suspects.

Evan Shlaes, the store owner, remembers the two men who arrived with a carousel horse in a pickup. "A couple of guys showed up and said it was grandpa's, and they were cleaning out his basement," Shlaes recalled. "It was just covered up with dirt. It seemed plausible to me, so I gave them some cash for it."

Shlaes got the two sellers' driver's license numbers and thumbprints, as required by city ordinances to keep thieves from fencing goods at secondhand stores and pawnshops.

"They were lying like a rug, but I didn't know that," Shlaes said.

The horse was sold to antique dealers from eastern Oregon.

The two men returned to Shlaes' store a short time later. "Then they showed up with another horse. So I bought another one from them," Shlaes said.

The two men kept showing up to sell more antique toys, dozens of license plates, Atlases, Shakespeare books and toy boxes.

"After they came back about five times, with a box each time, I started to get a little suspicious," Shlaes said.

About that time, Kidd's friend happened by the store and recognized the 1920s yellow carousel Parker horse that belonged to Kidd. Kidd showed up to retrieve the 7-foot-long horse.

Officer McMurray obtained the paperwork from Shlaes' sales. Shlaes bought one carousel horse for $450 from Thomas Paul Blaser, 33, on June 20 and paid $500 to Jesse Robert Barlow, 33, for a second horse Aug. 13. Kidd estimates the horses are worth about $4,500 each.

When questioned by a detective, Barlow initially said he didn't remember selling any carousel horses, then said he got them at an estate sale. However, the detective pointed out that when Barlow filled out the paperwork at the Really Good Stuff store, he said he had gotten the horse at a garage sale.

Shlaes said he's out a couple of thousand dollars. "I got victimized here, just as much as the guy who lost the originals," he said.

Barlow and Blaser now face a three-count indictment on aggravated theft and theft charges. Barlow has pleaded not guilty; a warrant is out for Blaser's arrest. Barlow's trial is set for March 29.

Kidd still hopes to get some of his stolen collectibles back. "I'm still amazed they got away with as much as they did," he said. "The stuff has got to be around town somewhere."